dc.description.abstract |
The purpose of this study was to evaluate an emerging financial education
program, financial coaching. This study investigated whether participants improved their
credit scores after participating in a financial coaching program. Four hypotheses were
examined: (1) Financial coaching improves the credit scores of its participants. (2)
Financial coaching has a greater impact on improving credit scores for women compared
to men. (3) Financial coaching has a greater impact on improving credit scores for
younger participants compared to the older ones. (4) Financial coaching has a greater
impact on improving credit scores for minorities compared to non-minorities. For
hypothesis 1, a paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare the last credit score and
the first credit score at each site, both separately and collectively. For hypotheses 2 – 4, a
hierarchical regression analysis was conducted on the total of all six sites collectively and
evaluated on each site separately. First score, gender (hypothesis 2), age (hypothesis 3),
and race (hypothesis 4) were entered into the regression to predict the last score.
For hypotheses 1, for five of the six sites, there was no significant difference
between the first and last credit scores for participants. When all six sites were
combined, there was a significant difference between the first and last credit scores. For
hypotheses 2, there was no gender difference in average credit scores. However, when
comparing the average increase in credit scores, the females had a slightly higher increase
than males. For hypothesis 3, older participants’ average credit scores increased more
than that of the younger ones’ scores. For hypotheses 4, there was no race difference in
average credit scores. However, when comparing the ranges in average credit scores
between African-Americans and Caucasians, African-Americans’ range did improve
slightly more than the range of Caucasians. |
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